Grand Rapids Serra Club Newsletter, July 2012

Calendar of Events.
July 1, 2012.  Feast Day of Blessed Junipero Serra.
July 4, 2012.  Independence Day and Conclusion of U. S. Bishops' Freedom of Conscience Initiative.

July 9, 2012.  Luncheon Meeting and Speaker, 12:00 Noon at the University Club.
July 16, 2012.  Board Meeting, 12:00 Noon at Sacred Heart.
July 23, 2012.  Prayer Service and Luncheon. 12:00 Noon at Sacred Heart.
August 13, 2012.  Luncheon Meeting and Campus Tour, 12:00 Noon at D. A. Blodgett/St. John's Home.  We will have lunch in one of the designated cabins, followed by the tour.  See below for a history of the home, which, according to its motto, has offered home and hope for children since 1887.
June 20-23, 2013.  Serra International Convention, Mallorca, Spain, or perhaps Barcelona, with side trip to Mallorca.  Grand Rapids Serrans Msgr. Ed Hankiewicz, our moderator,  Dan Grady, and Dennis and Margaret Lieber attended the 2012 Serra International Convention in Providence.

July Speaker.  At the invitation of Serran Larry Mulligan, our July speaker will be Mr. Edward L. Twohey, a member of the Catholic Lawyers' Association and founder of the Twohey Maggini law firm.  Mr. Twohey is the nephew of Boys Town founder Fr. Flanagan.  He was the mayor of Boys Town in 1943 during his senior year and last month was inducted into the Boys Town Sports Hall of Fame.  Tom Rademacher featured Mr. Twohey in his April 13 column in the Grand Rapids Press (the article can be found at mlive.com.  See biographical information about Father Flanagan elsewhere in this newsletter.

Priests's Anniversaries for July.  We extend our special thanks to Lee Sullivan for completing the monumental task of sending out all of the June cards and for her part in this ministry throughout the year.  We received a recent note from Lee, who writes that at a recent dinner with Fr. John Kenney, he mentioned that he had received our card and two others from parishioners;  he also reaffirmed that the priests appreciate these cards very much.
Fr. Ray Bruck, July 20, 1958.
Fr. Larry King, July 8, 1989.
Fr. Lam Le, July 10, 2004.

A Special Thanks.  President Tim Hile expresses our thanks to Msgr. Ancona, who served as guest chaplain/moderator at our June 25 meeting at Sacred Heart at Msgr. Ed's request.  As President Hile says, Msgr. Ancona is welcome at any time at any Serra event.

The St. Lazare Golf Outing.  Serrans Dan Laville and Larry Mulligan attended.  70 golfers participated, as opposed to 60 last year, the first annual outing.  Our club sponsored Fr. Joachim Lalley.  Fr. Gainey couldn't be there because he was returning from Ireland that day but wants to be kept in mind for next year.  A number of priests were interested but couldn't respond to our invitation because of their busy Saturday schedules during June.  All in all, the event was very successful, and we especially thank those who represented our club at the outing.

Holy Hour.  At our last meeting, Frank Lake mentioned IHM's Holy Hour cards, which are to be sent to a person of one's choosing announcing that a Holy Hour has been offered.  We will include a copy of this card either in this newsletter or in a separate e-mail.  The Holy Hour cards would be a great way to send our special support to our priests and seminarians and a wonderful way to remind us of the importance of adoration in our prayers for vocations.  Thank you, Frank, for telling us about the Holy Hour cards.  Code for the chapel at IHM is 5412. 

Holy Family Radio.  Tim Hile received a letter dated June 1, 2012 addressed to him and our club from Larry Nienhaus thanking us for our participation in the Spring Sharathon.  According to anyone's standards, the event was even more successful than anticipated:
"It has taken us a couple of weeks to tally our  results in the aftermath of such an outpouring of support during our first on-air pledge drive.  We can now excitedly report to you that we surpassed our $100,000 goal in a very big way.  With your help, we received pledges of financial support totaling more than $178,000!  It's funding that is being made available to us either immediately or over the next three years, depending on the wishes of individual donors.  Know that the generous gift of funding, time, products or services helps us to build a solid foundation of financial support that typically takes at least two years, according to the Catholic Radio Association.  As we are just entering our second year, we will confidently continue that "climb" to financial stability.  Our annual operating costs exceed $250,000, and that does not include the costs of extending our broadcast day to (24/7) and expanding our broadcast coverage to parts of West Michigan that do not yet have Catholic radio.  We still have much work to do!
Serrans Dan Grady, Mark Kubik, Tim Hile, and Weldon Schwartz participated in our hour of broadcasting, and Beverly Shields and Nancy Mulvihill worked the phones.  We thank all who helped with this opportunity to provide some very positive publicity for our Club.
Editor's Note:  I know about the journalistic we, and I realize I could be writing, "We apologize for neglecting to include this information in our June newsletter."  However, I can't blame another person for the error, not even a fictitious one!  But the news is so good that we must tell you about it!

About Father Flanagan.  Father Edward Joseph Flanagan, Born July 13, 1886 in Ballymoe, County Roscommon, Ireland; died May 15, 1948 in Berlin, Germany, was a Catholic priest in the United states.  He was founder of what is arguably the most famous orphanzge--Boys Town.  The campus is not just an orphanage, but now a center for troubled youth.

Father Flanagan's parents were John (a herdsman) and Honoria Flanagan.  He attended Summerhill College, Sligo, Ireland.  He emigrated to the USA in 1904 and became a citizen in 1919.  He attended Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland, where in 1906 he received a bachelor of arts degree in 1908.  He studied at St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York.  He cotinued his studies in Italy and at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, where he was ordained in 1912.  His first parish was O'Neill, Nebraska, where from 1912 he served as assistant pastor at St. Patrick's Catholic Church and later at St. Philomena's Church.

In 1917 he founded a home for homeless boys in Omaha.  Bishop Jeremiah James Harty of the Diocese of Omaha had misgivings, but endorsed Father Flanagan's experiment.  Because the downtown facilities were inadequate, Flanagan established Boys Town, ten miles west of Omaha, in 1921.  Under Father Flanagan's direction, Boys Town grew to be a large community with its own boy-mayor, schools, chapel, post office, cottages, gymnasium, and other facilities where boys tetween the ages of 10 and 16 could receive an education and learn a trade...

Father Flanagan received many awards for his work with delinquent and homeless boys.  He served on several committees and boards dealing with the welfare of children and was the author of articles on child welfare.  Internationally known, Father Flanagan traeled to Japan and Korea in 1947 to study child welfare problems.  He made a similar trip to Austria and Germany and, while in Germany, he died on May 15, 1948, of a heart attack.  He was buried in the Dowd Chapel at Boys Town.


Legacy: 
In 1986, the United States Postal Service issued a 4-cent Great Americans series postage stamp honoring him. 
Father Flanagan is a member of the Nebraska Hall of Fame.
On February 25, 2012, Reuters reported that Archbishop George J. Lucas of the Archdiocese of Omaha, Nebraska, would formally open the canonization process of Father Flanagan with a March 17, 2012 prayer service at Boys Town's Immaculate Conception Church.  Upon completion of that ceremony, he was given the title, "Servant of God", the first of three titles bestowed before canonization as a Catholic saint.
Source:  Wikipedia
About D. A. Blodgett/St. John's Home.  
In the 1880s Grand Rapids was a bustling commercial center fueled by the lumber industry.  But left out of the city's prosperity was an alarming number of children made homeless as epidemics of typhus, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and cholera swept through West Michigan.

Children begged in the streets of the city, malnourished and very sick.  Leading citizens organized to rescue them.  As early as 1882 Bishop Henry Richter was exhorting the Catholic community to build an orphanage.  With a $60,000 bequest from a wealthy lumberman named John Clancy in 1884, plans were soon underway,  Meanwhile, Jennie Blodgett and Emily Clark were planning the Children's Aid Society, with the blessing (and funds) from Jennie's husband, Delos Abiel (D. A.) Blodgett.  In 1887, the Blodgett-Clark project commenced at 42 Lafayette.  Before long, it would be called the D. A. Blodgett Home for Children.

Up the street, on the corner of Lafayette and Leonard, the Bishop's "St. John's Orphan Asylum" was under construction.  The four-story "castle" opened in 1889.  Over the next thirty years, both ventures expanded to accommodate wave after wave of orphans.  In 1908, the Blodgetts built a stately building on Cherry Street where children of all faiths and backgrounds received expert physical care and schooling.  But both the Blodgetts and the Dominican Sisters of St. John's soon realized the limitations of custodial care.  The Blodgetts spoke for both agencies when they observed, "(Our children) have everything they need, except a family."

A Need for Homes.  By the early 1920s, foster programs were established at both agencies.  For the rest of the century, advancements in medicine and greater acceptance of foster care and adoption brought an end to traditional orphanages.  By 1946, more than 60 percent of children served by St. John's Home were in foster care.  The program would become the Catholic Service Bureau, and later, Catholic Social Services.  In the years following World War II, ominous societal changes created difficult new challenges for home placement programs.  The modern "orphan" was now likely to be a victim of family violence, abuse, and neglect fueled by a rise in alcoholism and drug use.  Some children needed much more than a new family could provide.

An Expansion of Services.  D. A. Blodgett  for Children began offering new prevention services to vulnerable families.  Mentoring programs, in particular Big Brothers and Big Sisters, were added starting in 1965.  Since then, more than a dozen specialized foster and adoption programs, community based programs, have been added.  St. John's Home began focusing exclusively on treating young victims of abuse in its residential program.  After relocating to a new campus on Knapp Street in 1992, the KidsFirst program was added to provide emergency shelter to abused children.  At some point, (no one knows the exact date) the two agencies began collaborating.  A St. John's orphan became a D. A. Blodgett for Children adopted child, and a D. A. Blodgett for Children foster child came to St. John's Home for treatment.

A Merger Meant to Be.  In early 2009, leaders at St. John's Home and D. A. Blodgett for Children began discussing the merits of a merger.  When this unification became official on January 1, 2010, eighteen different programs and services were brought together.  Out of respect for the founding fathers and mothers and thousands of donors and volunteers, the historic names were  preserved as the agency was renamed "D. A. Blodgett-St. John's."...and has become one of Michigan's largest children's welfare agencies.
Source:  D. A. Blodgett/St. John's Home website.
In August we will continue with a tribute to the agency's founders.
D. A. Blodgett/St. John's Home is located at 2355 Knapp Street NE, 49505, or some of you will be able to get Google Maps on your phone by texting the word "Gmaps" to 466453.  Knapp Street is located off of Fuller Avenue NE.  We will provide maps as needed as August 13 draws near.

A Message from our President.
Sent Sunday, July 1, 1012.
Dear Serrans,
Please continue to pray for Father Godfrey and all who belonged to St. Mary Magdalene, which was totally destroyed in a fire earlier this morning.  We pray for the community in their time of need and for the parish to pull together under Father Godfrey.  The building is not what makes the community.

I've had the opportunity to enjoy some quiet time already this summer, reading in the early morning and late evening and have found myself at the Adoration Chapel at IHM.  Love the slower and less formal pace of summer.  Hope you are all finding some quiet time with the Lord.

Have not heard a full account from the Serra International Convention in Providence, but the preliminary indication was that there was some progress made, and not a lot of the amendments were passed.  We look forward to more from those who attended Providence.

As Catholics and Serrans we face many challenges on many fronts on a daily basis.  Faith carries us forward and through all this!  Thank you for all you do in keeping the faith.

Tim Hile